And we in the UK are next. Only we're too dumb to realise here what is going on in the US. We just bang up the socially deprived, but we make no money out of them. We are following American hard-line approaches - tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime - but our politicians haven't figured out yet how to turn that into cash.

I await the announcement that UK prisons are going to be the next base for international call centres.

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Author of the best-selling books "Hunting for Worms" and "Black and White and Hate All Over"

The suburb I live in is butted up against one of the worst, most violent neighborhoods in Chicago. You cannot get from here to the Loop without driving past what is essentially a LARGE rotting hole in the center of the third largest city in the US. Land that would otherwise be hugely valuable in any other large city is like a ghost town, here. If you don't believe me, take a look with Google Earth. Sudhir Venkatesh wrote a very good book about the politics that led up to it. It's difficult to read, but if this is a topic that truly interests you, you should.

I also have a little personal experience, too. I grew up in rural poverty. Both of my parents were on drugs and alcohol all of the time. The people I see get on the Blue Line every morning at stops like Kedzie and Western have more than I ever did. New clothes, cell phones, even iPods. I was homeless through from age 17 until 25. Everything I owned fit into an army duffel. It took me 6 years to finish college. I had to stop, twice, for a year, to earn enough money to go back. No grants, just loans and an endless stream of minimum wage cleaning jobs. Mind you, I'm not asking for pity -- that plus $0.50 won't buy me a cup of coffee.

One thing I took away from the experience of raising my standard of living is that for every shitty thing you can't control, there are just as many things that you can. And letting anything -- ANYTHING -- be an excuse for why you cannot escape a shitty life is ultimately on you. Our ape-like ancestors didn't make it out of the trees and through a million years of life without electricity and antibiotics by being inflexible and unable to adapt.

A documentary like this one does a disservice to the folks it is intended to help. There's a very difficult to distinguish line where those making assertions desperately worth consideration discredit themselves by crossing it. No doubt, there exists an enormous problem. There's some kind of severe depression being passed from one generation to the next, getting worse as it goes. Likely this is what makes self-medication such an easy out. But all of the misguided efforts to 'fix it' are just dumping resources into a black hole. Attempts to "explain" what is happening and why are just so much chaff. Instead, we should be taking a cold, hard look at why these phenomenons persist, in the way Venkatesh did. And not by slinging about words like "black," "white," and "racism" as if they explain something. They don't. They're just verbal slaps.

whatever it is Racism is a crime and more over,Drug addicts should not be treated wildly...they have to be given consultation and if possible they have to be sent to any rehab centers._____________Drug Rehab

If you break the law, you've broken the law. If you think the law is wrong, endeavor to change it through legal means.

There's a much sneakier phenomenon that is suspiciously akin to slavery: the clemency process. Once you've been convicted of a crime, for as long as it remains on your record, you can be denied employment (or fired) based on your background check. You can petition for clemency, but most states' attorneys offices will push back hard... they will invent arbitrary criteria, if necessary, to prove you are not rehabilitated. They keep records on you longer than the local government, but they will not let you view these records. Likely not even if you slapped them with FOIA.

Court-appointed attorneys typically counsel people to plead guilty, using scare tactics to get them to comply. They capitalize on the common ignorance of the law and the judicial system. Why? People are stupid and often don't understand that they might never even go to trial. The system just wants to funnel these cases through as quickly as possible.

Having said that, ignorance of the law is no excuse. This is our country, and these are our laws. If the judicial system is making huge mistakes,...

...somebody oughta do something about that.

Yeah? Who?

What? Are you NOBODY?

For fuck's sake. What kind of weak mind do you have to have to reduce shit like this to racism? Or any kind of -ism. Weak minds, distracted by pretty colors... this is how things got so fucking bad. Like we're all a bunch of children screaming, "NO FAIR!" Here's a clue: life fucking sucks. Shit isn't going to magically work to your advantage, no matter how much you whine. Grab your fucking nutsack and man up.